Tag Archives: boundaries

“Her heart was a secret garden and the walls were very high.” ― William Goldman, The Princess Bride

Hello, Lovelies!

December is a month for planning and dreaming, interspersed with fun, curiosity, friendship and celebration. Keep that in mind as we look at the gifts of inspiration which the oracle card Rupunze lbrings us.

Rapunzel tells us that it’s time for some serious heart management this week. You’re the keeper of your heart, and you get to decide whether to open or close those gates.

For some of you that will mean setting clear boundaries and being able to say NO, especially in the lead up to Christmas. Tune in and work out how you feel. In fact, you probably already know but might not have been brave enough to honestly claim those feelings. Know that it’s okay if you need to turn down an invitation, decline to participate in something that goes against your values, rescind an offer, put limits on a relationship or situation, or let everyone else go and have fun while you stay home. Where might you need to put some walls up, lock the door, or set security at the entrance and restrict who gets in? Pull back from whatever doesn’t sit comfortably with you.

For some of you it will be time to throw the doors to your heart wide open. Rapunzel shows you that it’s time to take a chance on emotional connection – where it feels right and it aligns well. Of course you need discernment – hearts are tender and precious things – but goodness, this is the week for opening the doors to that heart of yours. Dive right into socialising or projects and places that light you up. Follow your Bliss!

It’s a beautiful week for connecting deeply with the people, places and events that enrich you and give you joy or comfort, but you need to decide what you most need – don’t let others dictate to you what they think might make you happy.

Rapunzel tasks you to be open to opportunity and possibility, but to honour your limits too.

Supportive crystals this week?

Petrified Wood promotes compassion, wonder, curiosity and benevolence. It is a stone for healing old hurts and allowing hope back into your heart. Amazonite helps you to live bravely and from your heart, especially in regard to your creative projects. It will boost self-confidence and self-worth. Snowflake Obsidian is a wonderful stone for any form of pattern-breaking, helping you to invite or invoke change. Rhodonite (pictured) is great for supporting you to follow your heart.

Image from the GemStoneGeeks

Helpful essential oils?

Rose Essential Oil is my choice this week. This sweet and uplifting oil inspires deep emotional connection and opens your heart chakra to love. It enhances your mood, helps to balance hormones, brings emotional healing and draws joy and peace into your life Apply it to your pulse points at wrist, neck and over heart like a perfume. Place a few drops in your bath water. Diffuse it. Put a drop in the palm of your hand, rub hands together and then inhale the aroma. (Here’s a simple three-minute meditation you can do using geranium or any of your favourite essential oils – click here)

If you can’t access a pure rose essential oil, try Ylang-Ylang,Geranium or Magnolia.

I’m passionate about essential oils and their capacity to support our wellness journey and our spiritual and emotional wellbeing. If you’d like to know more or want to source the oils I recommend and trust visit this site or contact me at channelnc@gmail.com

A space to learn and grow

The next four years 2019 – 2022 are significant for our personal and spiritual evolution, as well as for the evolution of our planet. I thought long and hard about the best way to support your growth over that time and have decided that beefing up the content in my YOM membership area was the best way to help you grow, adapt and step more fully into your authenticity and the life-path you chose for yourself pre-birth. You’ll see this membership group evolve into an Academy of Learning over the next twelve months so that my team and I (human and energetic) can serve you the best way I know how.

My membership space is a place where I can walk you through the year, explain all the aspects of the month ahead and the crystals we’ve chosen, where I do special webinars with my tribe to teach you new skills and share important information, and where I channel with my guides in live webinars, and answer your questions and provide general support. I often jump into our private Facebook group to pull cards and bring through messages for our members too. And did I mention what an incredible, loving and supportive space our YOM Community is? There is real friendship and belonging there. It’s a safe space, a heart space, and a place for great personal transformation. I totally heart it!

The format of YOM is constantly evolving. In 2019 you will have access to the foundation YOM online course as well as twelve free additional mini-courses and live events over the next year as well as our wonderful private Facebook group.

Want to experience our membership space and community? With every YOM Planner sold between now and December 25 I am offering you a one-month trial and a chance to win a full year’s membership. More details here.

Holding you, as always, in my thoughts, prayers and meditations, and intending for you a life of abundance and joy, where you are no longer limited by your doubts.

All my love,

Nicole ❤ xx

PS: Monday’s oracle card, ‘Rupunzel’, is from the Inner Child Cards – A Fairy-Tale Tarot. I use any cards shown as a prompt for channelled messages and my own own intuitive wisdom, so my take is sometimes quite different to the meaning found in a book.

“The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.”
~ Henry David Thoreau

Hello, Lovelies.

The oracle card I have chosen to guide us this week is ‘Wisdom’ from the Chakra Wisdom Oracle Deck by Tori Hartman.

If you read my forecast for March, you’ll remember thatMarch is all about creating systems and structures which make your everyday life more supported and sustainable.

So, what gifts does Wisdom bring for you this week?

Wisdom reminds us that when we follow the calling of our heart magic happens. This week support comes from unexpected quarters, inspiration flows, and from the smallest of beginnings we can begin to create results beyond our wildest imaginings. It’s a strong week for intuitive wisdom and spiritual guidance. It’s the kind of week where miracles can happen.

It’s the kind of week where we get the job, get the lucky break, win the prize, meet the love of our life.

It’s a fabulous week for finding a coach, mentor or teacher. For joining a class or a mastermind. For signing up to learn more. Or for offering your own expertise in the world.

Wisdom is all about healthy boundaries, asking for help and practicing extreme self-care.

It’s about not apologising for your choices, or feeling that you need to explain or defend yourself.

Wisdom is also a reminder to build our lives and businesses in sustainable ways.

There’s no point reaching our goals or realising our dreams if we have destroyed our relationships, our health, our lives or our planet in the process.

Wisdom encourages us to recognise the price we pay when we don’t follow our heart. When we ignore our dreams life becomes colourless, our very life-force drains away, we waste our one precious life and become filled with regret.

The way forward this week is to take steps towards what makes our heart glad. Those steps might be small, but they are vital to our long-term happiness and wellbeing.

Our heart knows what it wants! True wisdom is paying attention to that, and creating action to make our dreams a reality.

Supportive crystals this week?

Red Jasper helps us to make decisions and stick to them this week. Tiger Eye is fabulous for clarity and creativity. Tourmaline in Quartz will build courage and help you to stand by your choices and decisions. Sodalite will help you to understand and speak your truth.

Helpful essential oils?

Young Living’s Believe or Common Senseessential oil blends are good choices this week. Believe works to boost our self-confidence and self-belief. Common Sense oil is a super stress-buster that will help with allowing you to become clear about what you want, and to feel secure with your choices and decisions, especially around change. If you want to make your own combination or use a single oil, choose from grapefruit, basil, geranium and frankincense. Use one to two drops of each in your diffuser – they blend beautifully together.

Holding you, as always, in my thoughts, prayers and meditations, and intending for a you a life of abundance and joy, where you are no longer limited by your doubts.

“The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them.”
~ Thomas Merton

Hello Lovelies,

Here’s this week’s oracle card and my take on the energetic outlook for the days ahead.

‘Peace’, from Colette Baron-Reid’s Wisdom of the Oracle deck is a gentle reminder of the need for self-love and self-care, and for the importance of clear-thinking and heart-wisdom in your relationships.

First and foremost this week is the requirement for rest and reflection. Give yourself time to heal. Give yourself time to think. Give yourself time to dream and to plan and to work on your own projects. Make yourself, and your dreams and needs, your crowning priority this week.

Find it impossible to get quiet time at home? Then take yourself for a walk. Visit the beach or a local park. Stay up late or get up early, while the rest of your household is in bed. Sometimes we need a space that is free of the thoughts and energies of others, in order to truly feel and be ourselves.

For some of you, this week may also be about finding your own space, creating an office or a writing room or art space. It could be about house hunting, or moving out on your own.

Got a project on the go? Make space for it. Create dedicated studio room, desk space, computer files, and project boxes to store your scraps of paper and trinkets.

This week is also about relationships. Here are the top five considerations:

#1 Put your relationship with yourself first this week. Extend the olive branch of forgiveness and self-acceptance to yourself, whatever your current circumstances. Need help? Ask for it. Get your needs met. Do or schedule the things you’ve been putting off that support your physical and emotional health, your learning, your wild untamed yearnings (like art classes or walking the Camino or dancing all night). Yep. Really.

#2 Who can you let into your inner circle? Who do you trust? Who has your back? Who lifts you up? Ensure that these relationships are in good repair. Nurture them and spend time in them or schedule some catch-ups for the weeks ahead.

#3 Those difficult and hurting spaces with people. Review them from a soul space rather than from that place of wounding. Consider the other person. Are they insecure, anxious, driven by a worry or neurosis that you can’t see? All of us are wounded, one way of the other. When we sit in compassion we begin to allow that behaviours and attitudes may be less about ourselves and more a reflection of where the other person is at. Try your best to look from new angles at these old or ongoing hurts and you’ll begin to feel a shift.

#4 Where are your boundaries? Sometimes we end up in relationships that don’t work for us as well as they might because we haven’t clearly expressed our needs and our boundaries. We put other people’s feelings or needs ahead of our own wellbeing. That never ends well for us… (You know it!) This week speak up for yourself. Identify and patrol your emotional perimeter. Use discernment around who you allow into your inner circle.

#5 The Drift Away Factor and Door Closing. There will sometimes be relationships that only stay active because of the one-sided effort we invest. This week think about how you might invest less, so that the relationships drift further and further away from you. OR so that the other party must suddenly begin to pull their weight. Any relationships that need a door closed on them as a more formal ending? This could be love, work, family, friends, or even a destructive behaviour you do to yourself.

It’s a great week. A week where you can get so much done. A week where you can truly begin to feel and experience forward momentum. Use it well!

Much love to you, Nicole xx

PS – By the time you read this I will already be in hospital, getting ready to be prepped for surgery. I’ve written a few posts and scheduled them to post automatically over the next few weeks so there will still be stuff to read and share. But I’ll post here or on facebook just as soon as I am able and update you all. Thanks for all the love and well-wishes. I’ll speak with you soon. Bless <3

“Setting boundaries is a way of caring for myself. It doesn’t make me mean, selfish, or uncaring because I don’t do things your way. I care about me too.”
~ Christine Morgan

2016 is a very important year, for many reasons. One is that it is a foundation year. Our choices in 2016 will set the tone for the next nine-year cycle, magnifying the energy of our thoughts, activities and interests from 2016, and delivering more of that in the coming years.

Think about that for a moment.

Whatever we choose (or by default don’t choose and simply let happen), we’ll be signing ourselves up for more of that in the years to come.

How do you want the next decade to look?

Like the years you’ve just been through? Or something different?

2016 is a year where it benefits us to make space for what is meaningful to us. It’s not enough to simply think about what we want. It’s time to start incorporating the activities and actions that will shape the unfolding of our lives in ways that are pleasing to us. We don’t even need to make wholesale and radical changes – we simply need to make sure that if something is important to us we make a little room for that in our lives in 2016. We only need to make a start, and then consistently keep having that thing show up in our year through conscious choices (that may end up becoming new habits!).

Boundaries become important. As we create time for ourselves and our dreams we must also guard that time so that it is not eroded by old habits of always putting others or unimportant stuff first. The boundary is not just there for others, it is also there for ourselves.

Boundaries are about us saying yes to what matters, and ensuring that what matters is represented in our daily lives.

Boundaries are also about us saying no. No to the relationships, behaviours, thought patterns and beliefs that take us away from our values and what matters most to us. No to the circumstances that limit or harm us, or that needlessly waste our energy and time.

As adults we have choices. 2016 is a great year for exercising those choices.

“Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.”
~ Henry James

I was raised to be well-mannered. A nice girl. A polite girl. A kind girl. A girl who was first and foremost considerate of the feelings and needs of others.

Mostly, that has served me well.

In fact, years of illness and pain, years of being different and of being psychic and empathic have further refined my deep desire to live from love and kindness and to choose to see the good in everyone.

But there is one small problem with that.

Sometimes, when I relentlessly pursue kindness and offer second chances (and many more..), when I support you, include you, uplift you and hold space for you, really all I am doing is drinking from your poisoned chalice. I am not helping you in any way – in fact you feed off my empathy and kindness. Why? Because, you are not wired like other human beings. You will not change. You are a narcissist. Or a sociopath. You play me for my kindness, my manners, my inherent belief in the goodness of all people, my deep desire to help others and to be of service.

I watched a loved one endure a terrible suffering for years at the hands of such a relationship. It almost broke her, and stole the best years of her life. It isolated her and destroyed her other relationships. Now that the situation is at an end this perpetrator still gas-lights her, and ruins her reputation with others. It’s an insidious and vicious situation.

This morning, once again, I was invited to do my own dance with such a person. This is a person who plays games with me. They berate me and tear me down to others. In the next breath or social media post they laud me and want to be my nearest and dearest. They copy me. They bully me, manipulate and game-play, and always, always explain their bad behaviours as being misunderstood – they are a victim, a sufferer who is only reaching out for help.

Each interaction twists me in knots. Knowing what they are does not make me feel any less distressed at our engagements.

In the past I have worried endlessly about what to do, or what to say because my innate driver is to be kind, to be selfless, to be the nice girl in the face of mean behaviour.

But I have also learned some important lessons. It is important to extend kindness to myself. To continue to knowingly suffer and gain no benefit from such an interaction is self-inflicted meanness. It is also my duty as a teacher to exclude such people from my teaching environments. A class full of empaths dealing with the drama of a narcissist or sociopath doesn’t help them – it distracts them from their work and from fulfilling their own needs.

Everyone has the capacity to be mean. And sometimes we are mean without even realising it. That’s not what I’m talking about.

If you’re going through a hard time, if you’re in the space of learning, as your teacher or your friend I will support you and hold space for you a thousand times over, through meanness and temper tantrums and all manner of other distressing or hurtful spaces. I’m up for that. I expect that, as part of my role, and I will fight for you and for your potential. I will love and believe in you until you can love and believe in yourself.

I stand for kindness. I believe in kindness. I believe in service. I believe in helping others. I will keep being kind, and well-mannered, and I will live from my heart.

But if you’re a dyed-in-the-wool narcissist or a sociopath you have no place in my life. I will actively close doors to you, and I will protect my heart, my home and my work space from your incursions. Still, I wish you well, and I send you love. But there is no space here for you at my table.

“She had discovered early that what we want out of life can change; that the important thing is to learn to recognize or even simply just to admit what we really want, and then to have the courage to reach for it.”
~ Candice Proctor, Whispers of Heaven

“The question is: how bad do things have to get before you will do something about it? Where is your line in the sand?”
~ Michael Badnarik

Today, under this Traveller’s Moon, is a good time to get clear on our starting place for change.

Understand this. You don’t need to know yet where you are headed. You just need to know what it is you really need to leave behind.

You need to get clear about what you DON’T WANT.

This isn’t a list of dislikes. It’s not an agenda of complaints.

Today I want you to spend some time and be totally honest with yourself. Based on all of your life experiences so far, and on a foundation of your values and integrity, what is it that you just can’t do, won’t do, don’t ever want?

Your starting place for change is to simply recognise the energies and styles of relationships that you are no longer prepared to accept in your life.

Think of it as drawing a line in the sand so that the Universe knows where you are at, and so that you can use this as a measuring stick for future situations, choices and relationships.

Image from Papa’s Job

It might not be a very long list. That’s okay. What’s most important is that you feel it in your heart and know it to be true for you.

So, I unexpectedly find myself in downtown Byron Bay, at a bookshop cafe, while I wait for a friend.

Except for a brief visit to a second-hand book store on the way to a friend’s funeral a few weeks ago it has been many months since I’ve been in a bookshop. It’s been too long since I’ve had my head buried in a book of any description.

And what I also realise as I sit here sipping chai, is that it’s been too long since I have lost myself in that world that is my own land of story. The characters sit languid, waiting, growing paler and more indistinct.

I have the usual excuses; life, health, family, a crazy schedule…

But it’s all bullshit really. I recognise a pattern sneaking back into my life where I make everything else momentarily more important that words on the page. How have I forgotten this basic fact – writing matters to me. Viscerally matters. I sit here in this bookshop space and it’s like an oxygen mask applied to a dying woman.

Stupid uncontrollable tears trickle down my face. A fat one plops off my nose and onto my keyboard. I love that I am in Byron. The woman at the next table doesn’t bat an eye. She hands me a tissue and smiles. I smile back. We grin dopily at each other.

“It’s the books,” I explain.

“I know,” she says in a hushed whisper. “So many books and I never give myself permission to just sit down and read.”

Yes, I nod. So many books and mine aren’t amongst them yet. It’s not a competitive thing, or a jealousy thing. It’s more like being heavily pregnant, waddling with the discomfort of a belly swollen beyond its measure, and ankles fat with fluid from an overburdened system. I’m writing all the time, but not the one story, not that one story that sings me to sleep each night and waits for me in the dusky dawn.

I’m bursting with discomfort and I know it won’t let up until I give birth to a fully-formed story. I need to sit here in this awful aching until I can hold this creative outpouring in my hands in some viable form.

The woman at the next table is sobbing now. But it’s Byron. I move my chair across and hug her. She hugs me back. And when we’re done, she goes off to buy a book, and I sit down at my laptop…

Just before she leaves, she comes back to my table, a bundle of books in her arms. “A book a month,” she says to me. “I’m promising you I’ll read one book a month.”

“Four hours a week,” I smile back. “I’ll write words just for me, four hours a week. We hug again. No tears this time.

Somewhere far from here, a bright speck in my imagination, a boy called James sits up taller and calls my name from the deck of his pirate ship. He remembers me. He waited. Together we sail off into unexplored waters…

When we feel good about ourselves, when we can view ourselves with kindness and treat ourselves well, this becomes the basis by which we attract relationships of a similar vibration into our lives. Love begets love. But what do you do when you don’t love yourself very much? How can you change your relationship to yourself so that you DO feel good about who you are?

Here are some very practical steps towards nurturing more love for yourself. Not all of them will be easy, but all of them are worthwhile:

Set boundaries – treat yourself with respect, and make sure others do the same. This is not always about stopping other people from exploiting you or treating you badly, sometimes it is about putting boundaries in place so that you don’t over-give, or neglect your own needs in order to please or placate others.

If you’re heart’s not in it, look for something you can care about. It doesn’t matter if this is a job, a college course, a hobby or a relationship. Life is too short to put energy into things that don’t fufill you or make you happy. Get your priorities clear. (Read about how I did that here – I’m not recommending my method, but I do recommend having some time to think about what really matters to you.)

Get help with addictions and behaviours that don’t serve you. Sometimes we get into patterns, behaviours or addictions that are not only damaging to our physical and emotional well-being, but that put us further into self-loathing, and destroy those last shreds of confidence and esteem we once had. There are many great organisations and counsellors out there, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, Weight Watchers, and a raft of amazing people dedicated to helping you overcome obstacles. Or maybe you need a book-keeper, or someone to clean your house. If it never gets done and you resent the doing of it, look to delegation. It’s not a dirty word. Make 2012 the year where you put up your hand and ask for help.

Make time for yourself. You’ll end up a simmering mass of resentment if you make time for everyone else’s needs and dreams and don’t leave any time for your own! There is no surer recipe for emotional burnout or relationship breakdown.

Make time for fun. Life is meant to be enjoyed, and laughter is like oxygen – we need it to survive. Do things you enjoy, and that make you happy. Spend time in the company of people who uplift you, support you and make you feel good.

Spend time in spiritual reflection and connection. Prayer, meditation, journalling and time in our own company all help us to know ourselves better.

Nourish your physical body with good food, sleep and exercise.

Use positive self-talk – don’t berate yourself, or call yourself names like “I’m so stupid” or “I’m hopeless”. Speak positively, and don’t allow others to talk down to you either! Be less critical and more supportive of yourself, especially when mistakes are made. Be your own cheer squad.

Follow through on your promises and commitments – especially those you make to yourself. When you live with honesty and integrity, it is so much easier to feel good about yourself.

Listen to your intuition and honour it. If it says rest, rest! If it says eat salad instead of cheesecake, do that. Intuition is like a muscle, the more we use it, the stronger it gets. How many times have you had a gut feeling about something or someone but you didn’t honour it, and it turned out badly. Trust yourself!

Practice kindness – to yourself and others. Be well mannered, considerate and live from your heart. Sometimes this might actually need to be tough love, but let your actions always come from love.

Stand up for yourself and what you believe in. There is courage within you, and it colours everything you do in the brightest of lights, when you choose to value yourself.

Forgive yourself. We are often the most critical and judgemental of our own thoughts and actions. Today, let it be okay. Give yourself permission to move on. Find a way to open your heart to loving yourself a little more. ♥

Look for the beauty around you, and within you. The more you seek it, the more you will find it in your life.

Practice gratitude. Even if it’s for a roof over your head, or that you made it through another day. Appreciate the small things. It helps build a path to greater miracles.

The following video has some great ideas for moving into a space of greater self love…

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